Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Privacy and Social Networking Companies

Why should we care? Put simply, all of this adds up to a perfect storm for technology companies playing in the social networking arena, where identity and personal information are at the core of the data around which these companies are built and create ‘intelligence from the crowd’. If consumers start to realise just how much information they are putting online about themselves, will they start to hold back? Will every social networking startup, online or mobile, now find themselves on the back foot? And what does this mean for “Web 2.0″?

Channel 4 ran a story detailing how Facebook is facing an investigation from the UK’s Information Commissioner (which oversees the implementation of the Data Protection Act) after a complaint from a Channel 4 News viewer. He found he could not remove his account or any of the data - photos, wall posts etc - associated with it.